Monday, February 08, 2010

Then Again, Let's Not

Confession time.

There are moments when I feel ungentlemanly for shooting peas at these old magazines. Part of it has to do with being a budding designer myself, and wondering which things I'm putting out there will some day make the Hit Parade of a "You Knit What?" as yet unborn.

The other part stems from an honest-to-goodness feeling of gratitude for publications like Workbasket. That plucky little thing toodled along for sixty years–a magnificent run for a periodical by anyone's standards–even though by the mid-1970s knitting and crochet were both on life support. Granted, Workbasket was heavy with flights of fancy that should have been grounded on the tarmac. Toward the end, fiber arts content was heavily supplemented with forays into tuna cookery and making your own beef jerky. But the editors kept putting it out there, month after month, long after more mainstream mags like Woman's Day and Family Circle had given up on any craft that required mastery of an actual skill.

On the other hand, just when I'm in danger of smudging the faded ink with tears of thankfulness, I turn the page and run into something like this.

In case they don't have doors where you come from, this is a doorknob cover. In case they don't have doorknob covers where you come from, you may be wondering why a doorknob needs a cover.

Me too.

I have encountered doorknob covers in real life–including several sisters, cousins and aunts of the Scary Clown variation shown below. They were to be found on various knobs around my paternal grandmother's house when I was a little boy, and I hated them.

When you are five years old, and small for your age at that, a doorknob cover is less a piece of handmade whimsy than a torture device. The doorknobs on the heavy old doors in grandma's house were either metal or china. They were slippery when nude. Tricked out in equally slippery acrylic, they became almost entirely impossible to turn, even with both hands.

And there was one on the bathroom door.

Place yourself, if you will, in the tiny shoes and underpants of a newly housebroken child who has had three glasses of Kool Aid and has just felt the alarming and unmistakeable call of nature. He heads for the commode, but finds the way barred by the immovable head of a smirking clown. He struggles, he bangs, he cries a little bit.

Finally, in desperation, he goes against everything Grandma and Sunday School have taught him rather than face the shame of admitting to the grown-ups that there's been an accident.

Grandma, if you're reading this, I used one of your good tablespoons to bury the doorknob cover over by where the plum tree used to be. I'm sorry. The tree is long gone; but since the clown face was made out of Red Heart, it's probably still there. At least you didn't have to mop the hallway.

Ahh, Workbasket - I SO recognize that cover photo! My mom had a subscription for years, and as a geeky 12ish year old, I spent hours and hours looking through them and even making a category index for the whole box of them (several years' worth).

That box got lost over the years and many moves, but my mom picked up a box of them at a thrift shop recently, and we spent an evening looking through them to see which ones we wanted to keep. It was very nostalgic to see a lot of the old covers I recognized. But I didn't find ANY patterns I wanted to keep :)

I always thought doorknob covers were meant to be used on doors that opened to the outside. My grandma in Cleveland had them on all the outside doors, but only during the winter when the metal would get cold. My dad would always rip them off at Christmas because he couldn't turn the knobs. :)

I can't even imagine a doorknob cover. Reading your post makes me really sad, not because of anything you said, but because I mailed about 90 copies of ancient knitting magazines to myself from Australia last time I visited and either the Aussie postal workers or the American postal workers managed to rip open the package and dump most of them out. I got about a third when the package finally arrived. I know this is pretty much totally irrelevant to your post--but I have to vent somewhere. Your post makes me think about all the wonderful things I could have added to my Ravelry queue, doorknob covers and all.

Somewhere in the Christmas decorations box, we have a Santa doorknob decoration. It's crocheted, has a fuzzy beard, and a jingle on its hat. I can think about it through the soft veil of nostalgia, but readily admit it made using doorknobs difficult; it usually ended up on a linen closet as a result.

There are modern versions of the doorknob cover, btw. I happen to own, for reasons that are now unclear, a glow-in-the-dark vampire Garfield the Cat head that's supposed to go on a doorknob. It's like an orange, fanged version of one of those cuffs you put on doors to keep toddlers from getting into trouble.

My grandmother had the kindest soul and would swap out the scary clown knob covers with flower ones when I would visit, as she knew I would rather pee my self than open the bathroom door with clown face of doom staring me down. She had to keep the covers on as my youngest sister would always blacken an eye or put a bruise on her head running around the house and run into the bathroom door knob. She also made a weinerdog draft blocker from Workbasket.

I have a 100% made of acrylic awesome Santa door cover my grandma made some time in the '70s. It comes out annually and perches on the front closet door. It has a couple of bells too. Fully featured. I'll Santa over that clown any day.

It's funny--just a few days ago I went out through the front door of our house (rarely used) and was struck by how cold it was. It never occurred to me that there was a technology already in use to combat the problem. My biggest worry was heat being lost on the other side of the door--think of the knob as a big heat wick bleeding BTUs out into the great big cold world. I wonder whether a doorknob cover on an exterior door would help with this...? Maybe I should get on it...

I have never liked "popcorn" crochet, and for a bride, well let's just say they blew the top off of this cover! I agree with Rachel and thought the top was Marilyn, but should have been Lucy, or Lucy gone blonde.

I have all the Workbaskets. Some I collected, but a lot were given to me by desperate tatters. Many of the tatting patterns are very clever. The directions are arcane. Over the years I have updated the directions and stored them on disk. The company that bought Workbasket doesn't even know what was published in the past. I have permission from them to update the patterns and post them on my website. But I think I will be dead or too old to see before I am done.The paper that Workbasket was printed on was awful. And they are crumbling away. When they are gone the patterns will be gone also. And that will be sad.

As a budding knitting designer you might be interested to know that many of the tatting designers were paid .25 cents for their work.

My grandma subscribed to Workbasket, but I'm pretty sure she never made any doorknob covers!

And I was glad that you realize that styles change and what is laughed at now was (usually) considered stylish or pretty at the time it was published. Every time I hear someone laughing at some style from the past, I wonder how soon someone will be laughing at whatever the fashions now....

Right after I read this post, I steamed up the bathroom with a hot shower, used my hands to put lotion on, and then COULD NOT open the slippery doorknob to let myself out of the bathroom! I was totally channeling your youthful experiences with doorknob covers. ;-)

I know these are door knob covers, but possibly they could be door knocker covers. I know that then the knockers wouldn't knock, but at Christmas time everyone would think Marley was appearing on their door.

My non-knitting grandmother made doorknob covers out of felt and embellished them with ribbons, embroidery and beads. Same result, tiny hands couldn't get the bloody doorknob to turn. Never thought of burying them...you would have been handy to have around back then.

My grandma specialized in crocheting attachments to kitchen towels so you could hang them on the refrigerator door without the towel getting bunched up. There was a button at one end. I have a couple of Christmas themed ones. They're kind of dorky, but actually pretty useful.

Why, oh why, does a doorknob need a cover? I cannot imagine putting any of those items on any of my doors! If I want to make them impossible for a child (or the cat) to open, I use latches at the tippy top.

I was fortunate to never have experienced door knob covers, toilet paper roll covers, or kleenex box covers at home or at the homes of relatives. So it was a shock to see them at the homes of friends' or at craft fairs my sister would take me to.

I can see door knob covers used for childproofing but on the doorknob of the bathroom? That's wrong.

I'd forgotten it, but this post did bring back some rather hazy memory of doorknob covers. I couldn't tell you whose house they were in, but I am thankful that at least they were relatively tasteful corcheted doily-like things, or something, I think, rather than those terrifying specimens.

The first Christmas Jonathan and I spent living under the same roof, he brought out two weird Santa Claus doorknob covers with buggy eyes that his grandmother crocheted and wanted to festoon the bedroom doorknobs. I vetoed them instantly.

Okay, you gave me an idea. I checked my collection of The Modern Priscilla (a "fancywork" magazine published 1890s-1930) for knitting stories and patterns. Knitting doesn't make its appearance until around 1916, is popular in the early twenties and then declines after that. However there is a story you will appreciate in the December 1919 issue about men who knit entitled "Manly artists in the Womenly Arts" the writing is hilarious (by today's standards), but there are some interesting vignettes of men who knit in the article. If I can figure out the ins and outs of the copyright, I post a copy on my blog.

I've suffered from clown phobia my entire life. I also get pretty darn freaked out by the thought of needing to use the bathroom and not having access to one. So this post brought together my two worst fears into a single, hideous nightmare. Despite its terrifying content, it was actually hilarious - thanks for the laughs!

When my son was about three, he had a permanent lump on his forehead from walking into doorknobs. These covers might have saved his head, but he'd probably still have the psychological scars from being smacked in the face by a clown.

A couple of years ago my dear husband purchased the Workbasket issue from the month/year I was born as a birthday gift. I treasure it... but I'm with you on the doorknob cover.

Years ago my mother used to wear a sun hat made from rectangles of Xray film with holes punched around the edges -then the rectangles were crocheted together to make a hat. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a Workbasket pattern! She finally stopped wearing it when a friend who was an MD held the hat to the sun, looked at the Xrays and announced that he thought he saw some ball gas!

OMG these old magazines are such easy pickings it is great! But I have to tell you that I spent my teens and college years in the 80's making blanket-sized sweaters out of Lopi yarn, and laughing at my mothers old 60's Bernat knitting mags. And wouldn't you know it now, those old fitted Bernats patterns are now cool vintage-wear! Don't think that the 80's will be back, though (we hope).

I always wonder, while I knit away on something *I* think is clever and beautiful, if my kids and grandkids just CRINGE at what they view as piece of crap that grandma made, much like I did at the crap my grandmother knit for me.... but I have not as yet inflicted a doorknob cover out of red heart on anyone, and I find that somewhat comforting.

You do know that there is (well, was) a "You Knit What?" blog, right? It's not really "as yet unborn." (But I do hope you don't end up there either - on perhaps a resurrected version.) What a shame that its run is over for now. That was a great site (still is): http://youknitwhat.blogspot.com/

When I was small we had a cover on a doorknob that would bang into the wall when the door was opened. I've seen where knobs eventually chipped big round holes into the plaster. The doorknob cover was eventually replaced by a nifty invention that was a rubber bumper on a post that was screwed into the baseboard to keep the door from opening that far. (Yeah, I'm that old and it was in the sixties.) This was the only purpose that I ever knew of for a doorknob cover, although there are poeple who like to decorate anything with a doily or a bit of whimsy.

The issue you have shown sells for .75 cents but I used to buy my mother a full years subscription for $3.00. For a birthday present.She loved it and made "something" out of every one she got. Yes, the bathroom tissue girls, but she did make a most favorite cardigan sweater for me too. Ah, we just didn't know any better in those days.

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